French security forces are bracing for the eventuality of civil unrest and fear there could be a missile strike on a passenger airliner or a September 11-style attack, according to sources close to French intelligence.

“Airlines have been warned of a possible attack on a plane with an anti-tank missile,” a source told The Telegraph. “But pilots are unsure how to take evasive action.”

The army has made contingency plans for the “reappropriation of national territory”, meaning to win back control of neighbourhoods where the population become hostile to the security forces and where guns are easily obtainable, according to the source.

“There are a lot of alienated and angry fourth-generation immigrant kids in the suburbs and the prospect of radicalisation is increasingly likely,” the source said.

“The idea that attacks like the one on the train are carried out by individuals acting on their own is not credible. We’re dealing with highly-organised networks of militant Islamists embarked on a campaign of violence and determined to intensify it.”

Kalashnikov automatic rifles -- used by the train gunman and Islamist terrorists who killed 17 people in Paris in January -- and anti-tank missiles are now obtainable in France. Many were smuggled in from the former Yugoslavia after the Balkan wars in the 1990s. More weapons have come in from Libya, the sources said, adding that organised crime and terrorist groups were working together to procure them.

“We don’t know what happened to the arms we (France) to Libyan rebels. It’s worrying,” the source said.

In the chaos following the fall of the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, French officials described the north African country as an “open-air arms market”. In 2011, France admitted to sending “light weapons” to Libyan rebels in 2011, but French media reported that consignments of heavier arms, including European-made Milan anti-tank missiles were also sent.

There were fears that Isil, al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups were procuring heavy weapons from the stocks of Gaddafi’s former army, and that rebel groups were losing control of their own arms.

As early as 2010, an anti-tank missile was seized by police along with several tons of cannabis. Since then, an unknown number of rocket-propelled grenades and missiles are believed to have been smuggled into the country.

A missile attack could be devastating for an airliner, particularly if the plane was taking off and full of fuel. The main Paris airport at Roissy is near drug-infested suburbs of the capital prone to violence.

Agents of the DGSI, France’s equivalent of MI5, warned they are powerless to improve surveillance of Islamist militants bent on losing their lives to cause maximum carnage, and have been “lucky” to have avoided far worse catastrophes since the Paris Islamist attacks in January that killed 17, Le Canard Enchaîné, the investigative and satirical weekly, reported.

An agent told the newspaper there were fears of “an upcoming 11 September à la française where (intelligence) services are mere spectators”.

Luck rather than judgment had allayed larger-scale strikes, another is cited as saying.

“We’ve been lucky. Passengers in a train who neutralise a suspect, another who shoots himself in the foot then calls the emergency services, and a third who fails to blow up a chemical factory; without these fortuitous turns of events, the human and material toll would have been much higher. And we wouldn’t have been able to change a thing,” he told the weekly.

“The truth is we’ve already tried everything. But we’ve reached the very limits of what we are able to do as much from a legislative and organisational as a financial point of view.”

European transport ministers are due to discuss more “systematic and coordinated” security checks across the continent in a meeting in Paris on Saturday, Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister announced on Wednesday.

"We must examine whether we can implement a system that allows for more systematic checks in airports, in public transport, in a more coordinated way," he told France Inter radio.

Recent violence in France and protest marches in Germany have drawn renewed attention to Europe’s Muslim population. In many European countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, concerns about growing Muslim communities have led to calls for restrictions on immigration. But just how large is Europe’s Muslim population, and how fast is it growing?

1. Germany and France have the largestMuslim populationsamong European Union member countries.
As of 2010, there were 4.8 million Muslims in Germany (5.8% of the country’s population) and 4.7 million Muslims in France (7.5%). In Europe overall, however, Russia’s population of 14 million Muslims (10%) is the largest on the continent.

2. The Muslim share of Europe’s total population has been increasing steadily.
In recent decades, the Muslim share of the population throughout Europe grew about 1 percentage point a decade, from 4% in 1990 to 6% in 2010. This pattern is expected to continue through 2030, when Muslims are projected to make up 8% of Europe’s population.

3. Muslims are younger than other Europeans.
In 2010, themedian age of Muslims throughout Europe was 32, eight years younger than the median for all Europeans (40). By contrast, the median age of religiously unaffiliated people in Europe, including atheists, agnostics and those with no religion in particular, was 37. The median age of European Christians was 42.

4. Views of Muslims vary widely among European countries. Pew Research survey conducted last spring found that majorities in France Britain and Germany had favorable views of Muslims. Opinion was roughly divided in Spain while negative views prevailed in Italy, Greece and Poland. Views about Muslims are tied to ideology. While 47% of Germans on the political right give Muslims an unfavorable rating, just 20% on the left do so. The gap between left and right is also more than 20 percentage points in France, Italy and Greece. And significant differences are found in Spain and the UK as well.

5. As of 2010, the European Union was home to about 13 million Muslim immigrants.
The foreign-born Muslim population in Germany is primarily made up of Turkish immigrants, but also includes many born in Kosovo, Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Morocco. The roughly 3 million foreign-born Muslims in France are largely from France’s former colonies of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

French security forces are bracing for the eventuality of civil unrest and fear there could be a missile strike on a passenger airliner or a September 11-style attack, according to sources close to French intelligence.

“Airlines have been warned of a possible attack on a plane with an anti-tank missile,” a source told The Telegraph. “But pilots are unsure how to take evasive action.”

The army has made contingency plans for the “reappropriation of national territory”, meaning to win back control of neighbourhoods where the population become hostile to the security forces and where guns are easily obtainable, according to the source.

“There are a lot of alienated and angry fourth-generation immigrant kids in the suburbs and the prospect of radicalisation is increasingly likely,” the source said.

“The idea that attacks like the one on the train are carried out by individuals acting on their own is not credible. We’re dealing with highly-organised networks of militant Islamists embarked on a campaign of violence and determined to intensify it.”

Kalashnikov automatic rifles -- used by the train gunman and Islamist terrorists who killed 17 people in Paris in January -- and anti-tank missiles are now obtainable in France. Many were smuggled in from the former Yugoslavia after the Balkan wars in the 1990s. More weapons have come in from Libya, the sources said, adding that organised crime and terrorist groups were working together to procure them.

“We don’t know what happened to the arms we (France) to Libyan rebels. It’s worrying,” the source said.

In the chaos following the fall of the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, French officials described the north African country as an “open-air arms market”. In 2011, France admitted to sending “light weapons” to Libyan rebels in 2011, but French media reported that consignments of heavier arms, including European-made Milan anti-tank missiles were also sent.

There were fears that Isil, al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups were procuring heavy weapons from the stocks of Gaddafi’s former army, and that rebel groups were losing control of their own arms.

As early as 2010, an anti-tank missile was seized by police along with several tons of cannabis. Since then, an unknown number of rocket-propelled grenades and missiles are believed to have been smuggled into the country.

A missile attack could be devastating for an airliner, particularly if the plane was taking off and full of fuel. The main Paris airport at Roissy is near drug-infested suburbs of the capital prone to violence.

Agents of the DGSI, France’s equivalent of MI5, warned they are powerless to improve surveillance of Islamist militants bent on losing their lives to cause maximum carnage, and have been “lucky” to have avoided far worse catastrophes since the Paris Islamist attacks in January that killed 17, Le Canard Enchaîné, the investigative and satirical weekly, reported.

An agent told the newspaper there were fears of “an upcoming 11 September à la française where (intelligence) services are mere spectators”.

Luck rather than judgment had allayed larger-scale strikes, another is cited as saying.

“We’ve been lucky. Passengers in a train who neutralise a suspect, another who shoots himself in the foot then calls the emergency services, and a third who fails to blow up a chemical factory; without these fortuitous turns of events, the human and material toll would have been much higher. And we wouldn’t have been able to change a thing,” he told the weekly.

“The truth is we’ve already tried everything. But we’ve reached the very limits of what we are able to do as much from a legislative and organisational as a financial point of view.”

European transport ministers are due to discuss more “systematic and coordinated” security checks across the continent in a meeting in Paris on Saturday, Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister announced on Wednesday.

"We must examine whether we can implement a system that allows for more systematic checks in airports, in public transport, in a more coordinated way," he told France Inter radio.

In all seriousness, they will certainly look our way (The US) if they get involved in any kind of fighting. "Hey US, remember who helped you win the revolutionary war? We have a little problem now. Could you return the favor?" We will, of course, take the side of whomever can get us the cheapest oil.